


Steel Sedition

by reisana_devlin



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Hate Sex, Implied Relationships, NSFW, Revenge, Shame, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:56:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reisana_devlin/pseuds/reisana_devlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Blind Betrayal, and the results of making Danse the example, not the exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steel Sedition

Sofia walked onto the command deck of the Prydwen, her face unreadable. Elder Maxson stood in his Brotherhood bomber jacket, hands clasped behind his back as he waited for her to approach and give her report. She stopped before him and reached into her pocket.

“Sir,” a voice crackled over his earpiece, “Will we need to provide a security detail? We can have a unit there on the command deck within thirty seconds if need be.”

“No, Knight,” he muttered under his breath, watching as Sofia’s face wrenched into a grimace, hand stuck in her pocket before she ripped it free, something small and metal swinging from a chain. The lambent tags flashed blue under the dull fluorescent light bulbs, but she shook the chain and let the holotags slide down. They clinked softly and stilled. Elder Maxson cleared his throat loudly and arched an eyebrow, waiting for the stone-faced knight before him to say something.

“It’s been taken care of,” she said, her voice even and cold. “He begged to become the example.”

“Good,” the man snarled, “I find it hard to believe you didn’t know it was a synth, knight. You spent a lot of time in the field with it. How could you not know its true identity?”

Sofia’s warm brown eyes, normally lively and sparkling, narrowed as she studied the elder’s face. For a man of twenty-something, he looked decades older than Nate. Nate had taken relatively good care of his skin, using sunscreen to help stop most of the damage from the sun before the bombs dropped. Her eyes flicked over Elder Maxson’s sun-leathered face, noting the deep lines in his forehead and the wrinkles about his eyes. His dark hair hadn’t responded to the stress of Brotherhood leadership the way his skin had…yet. Her lips curled into a snarl as she shook the holotags dangling from her fingertips.

“I believe you’ll be needing these, Elder,” she snapped, throwing them at his chest.

Maxson’s hand shot out and caught the tags by the chain. He looked at them before tucking them into a pocket inside his coat. With a clap of his hands, he startled Sofia and refocused her attention on the present.

“The traitor held a very high position within our order,” Maxson snarled, pacing back and forth in front of the Prydwen windows. “His execution creates a gap within our hierarchy, and aside from a brief momentary lapse of reason, your service to the Brotherhood of Steel has been exemplary. Within the powers I hold, I raise you to the rank of Paladin. The traitor’s suit of power armor is yours, and you have a set of quarters here aboard the Prydwen. Strength in steel, sister.”

Sofia snapped her arm to her chest in salute and bit her tongue, holding her salute before he answered in kind and turned away. She turned and marched away from the command deck and exited the airship. She strode with purpose to a vertibird and caught a lift down to the ground below.

She dodged the scribes, initiates, and knights nodding and breaking from task to congratulate her on her ascension to paladin. Sofia brushed them off and continued moving swiftly through the camp set up in the ruins of the airport. She continued her brisk pace until she cleared the gates of the small settlement set in the shadow of the overhang and customer service desk. She moved past the rusted metal fence panels and sat along the quiet shores, watching the sun setting behind the ravaged Boston skyline.

She dropped her arms and sank to the ground, punching her fist into the muddy ground before her knuckles rubbed raw and stung from grating against bits of debris. She slumped and looked over her shoulder, letting the weight of her actions sink in as she sank in the mud, and a loud sob escaped her lips. Her body shook as her grief seized her, a loud keening wail rising from her throat and escaping across the murky, choppy waters of the bay.

She had failed Danse as she had failed Nate, and she was rewarded with the fallen paladin’s rank. She hadn’t worn her wedding band since she began running missions with Danse from the police station in Cambridge, and she couldn’t quite remember Nate’s face through her tears. She collapsed and sobbed, body shaking and wracked with sobs as she realized she had made the wrong choice at Listening Post Bravo.

\----

Elder Maxson stared out the window of the Prydwen, miles above her and the crumbling walls of the airport. As the sun set behind the ruined skyline of Boston, he watched the waves crashing against the shores of the hollowed airport grounds. Someone had mentioned that the recent mirelurk attacks resulted in an abundance of meat that needed to be consumed, so Proctor Teagan had suggested a surf-and-turf night in the mess. A plate of Brahmin steak and buttery mirelurk cakes sat untouched and cold; the roasted tatoes and carrots had cooled and had an odd hazy sheen to them as the Brahmin butter solidified. He’d have to speak to the mess lieutenant about that, and he resolved to take it up at the next planning meeting with Teagan. They needed to recruit more settlements to provide food for their contingent of Brotherhood soldiers, and perhaps someone on one of those farms would have a fucking clue on how to churn quality butter from Brahmin milk.

As he paced over and poured a couple fingers of whiskey, he heard the door on the far end of the deck open and slam shut, rattling a pack of cigarettes off the table. Maxson shrugged and took a sip of the whiskey, swirling the amber liquid in the glass and returning to the window to see the last oranges bleed into purples as the sun sank behind the ruins of Boston. He continued sipping as he watched the skies black out, stars winking in far above the ship.

Elder Maxson contemplated the tension in Sofia’s shoulders, her cold demeanor, and the look of murder smoldering in her eyes when she debriefed him on her success in taking it out. He frowned before picking up his plate of dinner and dumping it in the wastebasket. This whole affair regarding the former paladin’s origins left a sour taste in his mouth, and the preparations for the grand assault were put on hold so the traitor could be dealt with. He poured himself another finger of whiskey and slammed it, reeling briefly before smashing the glass against the corner of the end table and heading to his quarters, feet crunching over broken glass.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not know what possessed me to write this. I am so sorry. This is not my usual fare, and I think I just had to get this out before resuming more works in "From around the Commonwealth."


End file.
